Danwei

I read a couple of specialized news blogs written mostly by people out of Hong Kong about things going on in China. It's pretty amazing story involving 1/6th of humanity. Here's some good blogs if you want to follow along: http://www.zonaeuropa.com/weblog.htm http://www.chinahush.com/ http://www.danwei.org/ There are many others. A good movie to watch is "Manufactured Landscapes" if you want to see the dark side of all this. Also, "Dwelling Narrowness" is a good mainland Chinese drama. Some versions on the Internet are available with fan contributed English subtitles. It does a pretty good job IMHO of talking about a lot of the apolitical transformations that are going on in Chinese society.

This is off-topic, but one of my favorite essays in English that deals with Chinese culture is this one by David Moser on Chinese "stand-up comedy": http://www.danwei.org/tv/stifled_laughter_how_the_commu.php This essay, alongside a post on Quora by Dashan, one of the most famous foreigners in China for his frequent appearance on Chinese TV, sheds light on aspects of a traditional Chinese performance art that many native Chinese may not have a clear idea about. Dashan's Quora post is linked from the first comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5117473

I love the PBR China story. $44/bottle. Hustle! "There’s almost no ale in China: I had to smuggle the yeast into the country." http://www.danwei.org/advertising_and_marketing/pabst_goes_upmarket.ph…

gambling, and porn sound totally illegal in China. ie: you can do it, but not like, "legitimately" or obviously There is a very well written story about a company that made a LOT of money doing gambling website in the "guise" of an MMORPG: http://www.danwei.org/electronic_games/gambling_your_life_away_in_zt.p… he company had successfully listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and its third-quarter operating income was 405.2 million yuan, with a profit of 290.2 million. This represented an astonishing 164% and 152% climb over the same period the previous year. The company had a book value of 6.8 billion RMB. It's genius: use real-life sales people to approach gamers in net-cafes, sell them something that simultaneously grants psychological pleasure and will save them time. Then slowly leverage the basic human need for approval and acceptance, stoke their pride, and watch the money roll in. This works especially well in China because in a land of so many people, "individuality" and "personal worth in uniqueness" is worth a lot of gold.

Just because the state owns lots of stuff does not mean the state is being communist. State capitalism is also a thing. As far as enterprise goes, after finding out that keeping everything in house was not working, nearly all state enterprises were incorporated and the government mostly got out of the running of the businesses, while still holding onto a majority of shares. There are also privately owned enterprises, which first equaled the number of people in employment in the public sector in 2001, and has been growing fast since, with China today having about the same balance of private sector to public sector jobs as Alaska. Also, the state does not own all the land, for the past ten years private land ownership and property rights have been established in law, hence the nail houses - http://www.danwei.org/bbs/property_rights_the_coolest_na.php

Baidu was indeed helped by the Chinese government. For example, google.com was redirecting to baidu.com (http://www.therawfeed.com/2007/10/chinese-redirecting-google-yahoo.htm… for example), Baidu can (could?) also help looking for illegal mp3 (http://www.danwei.org/china_information/baidu_bidu_guide_baidu_ipo_bai… etc.

Ah and yet, this still does not qualify as something that "hurts the feelings of the Chinese people." If you don't hear that magical phrase, they don't really mean it. Reference: http://www.danwei.org/foreign_affairs/a_map_of_hurt_feelings.php

Fortunately, the cure has already been found: http://www.danwei.org/front_page_of_the_day/confucianism_save_your_kid…